(Reuters) - Serbia has arrested Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic who is wanted by an international court on genocide charges, a family friend said on Thursday.

"He is in the headquarters of BIA," the person said, referring to the Serbian intelligence agency. "He was arrested in Serbia."

An interior ministry official said earlier police had arrested someone thought to be Mladic and were checking his identity.

"He has some physical features of Mladic. We are analyzing his DNA now," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The suspect, who had documents on him bearing the name Milorad Komadic, was arrested in Serbia on an anonymous tip, he said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic scheduled an urgent news conference for 1300 local time (8 a.m. EDT), without giving any reason. Serbia must arrest Mladic if it wants to join the European Union. The former Bosnian Serb commander is sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide during the 1992-5 Bosnian war.

The European Commission said it was awaiting confirmation of whether Serbian police have arrested Mladic and said such a move would show the country wanted to move forward on European Union membership.

Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List, which first reported the story citing Serbian police sources, said Serbian special forces had made the arrest on Thursday in Serbia.

The paper said it followed a tip-off that Komadic bore a resemblance to Mladic.

The prosecutor's office at the ICTY in The Hague said it could not comment on operational issues.

(Reuters) - Serbia has arrested Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic who is wanted by an international court on genocide charges, a family friend said on Thursday.

"He is in the headquarters of BIA," the person said, referring to the Serbian intelligence agency. "He was arrested in Serbia."

An interior ministry official said earlier police had arrested someone thought to be Mladic and were checking his identity.

"He has some physical features of Mladic. We are analyzing his DNA now," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The suspect, who had documents on him bearing the name Milorad Komadic, was arrested in Serbia on an anonymous tip, he said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic scheduled an urgent news conference for 1300 local time (8 a.m. EDT), without giving any reason. Serbia must arrest Mladic if it wants to join the European Union. The former Bosnian Serb commander is sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide during the 1992-5 Bosnian war.

The European Commission said it was awaiting confirmation of whether Serbian police have arrested Mladic and said such a move would show the country wanted to move forward on European Union membership.

Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List, which first reported the story citing Serbian police sources, said Serbian special forces had made the arrest on Thursday in Serbia.

The paper said it followed a tip-off that Komadic bore a resemblance to Mladic.

The prosecutor's office at the ICTY in The Hague said it could not comment on operational issues.

Ratko Mladic, "God of Genocide," arrested - Boing Boing
Today in Serbia even the radical right wing opposition is officially pro-European. No one in or near power aspires to dirty their hands with the Balkan wars; that brings no benefit. Modern Serbia has a cult of tennis stars rather than warlords. These Millennial adults have won some credibility, since they impress the outside world, without any taint of the distant 1990s.

Rioters overturned garbage containers, broke traffic lights and set off firecrackers as they rampaged through downtown. Cordons of riot police tried to block their advances, and skirmishes took place in several locations in the center of the capital. There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests. The clashes began after a rally that drew at least 7,000 demonstrators, many singing nationalist songs and carrying banners honoring Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander. Some chanted right-wing slogans and a few gave Nazi salutes. The demonstrators, who consider Mladic a hero, said Serbia should not hand him over to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.

"Cooperation with The Hague tribunal represents treason," Serbian Radical Party official Lidija Vukicevic told the crowd. "This is a protest against the shameful arrest of the Serbian hero." Demonstrators demanded the ouster of Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic, who ordered Mladic's arrest. A sign on the stage read, "Tadic is not Serbia." More than 3,000 riot police were deployed around government buildings and Western embassies, fearing that the demonstration could turn violent. Riot police tried to block small groups of extremists from reaching the rally. Supporters of the extreme nationalist Radical Party were bused in to attend the rally. Right-wing extremists and hooligan groups also urged followers to appear in large numbers.

Nationalists are furious that the pro-Western government apprehended Mladic on Thursday after nearly 16 years on the run. The 69-year-old former general was caught at a relative's home in a northern Serbian village. The U.N. tribunal charged Mladic with genocide in 1995, accusing him of orchestrating the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and other war crimes of Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Mladic's arrest is considered critical to Serbia's efforts to join the European Union, and to reconciliation in the region after a series of ethnic wars of the 1990s.

Mladic's son, Darko Mladic, said Sunday that despite the indictment, his father insists he was not responsible for the mass executions committed by his troops after they overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. "Whatever was done behind his back, he has nothing to do with that," Darko Mladic said.

Thumbs down on Mladic...UN prosecutors demand life sentence for Gen. Ratko MladicDec 7,`16 -- United Nations prosecutors on Wednesday demanded a life sentence for Gen. Ratko Mladic, telling judges that they should convict and imprison the former Bosnian Serb military chief for orchestrating atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger told judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that it would be "an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice to impose any sentence other than the most severe available under law: A life sentence." Tieger was speaking at the end of prosecutors' closing statements at the conclusion of Mladic's trial on charges including genocide, murder and terror. Mladic's defense attorneys will deliver their closing statements before the three-judge panel retires to consider verdicts, which are expected late next year.

Mladic faces 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide linked to his command of troops accused of atrocities including indiscriminately shelling and sniping in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and murdering thousands of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, Europe's worst massacre since World War II. The 74-year-old Mladic insists he is innocent and often appeared unmoved by the prosecution's final statement. He spent part of the morning in court Wednesday leafing through two newspapers, sometimes looking up at a computer screen when prosecutors displayed images of Bosnian Serb army orders. As Tieger delivered his sentence demand, Mladic stared at him across the courtroom.

On the final day of prosecutors' closing statement, lawyer Adam Weber told judges that Mladic played a key role in the deadly siege of Sarajevo during the war, saying it was the general's "personal approval that was necessary" for Serb forces to shell the city using specially modified munitions. Another prosecutor, Peter McCloskey, went on to outline Mladic's role in the Srebrenica slayings, saying that "we see Mladic commanding his forces in an organized and systematic capture, detention, transportation, execution and burial of over 7,000 able-bodied men and boys of Srebrenica." Mladic's trial, which started more than four years ago, is the last case still underway at the tribunal, which convicted and sentenced 83 suspects. Among them was Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who was sentenced to 40 years in March for genocide and other crimes.

Tieger reminded judges that four of Mladic's subordinate officers have been convicted by the tribunal and sentenced to life for their role in the Srebrenica genocide. Mladic insists he did nothing wrong during the war that left 100,000 dead, claiming that his military campaigns were intended to protect the Serb people as Bosnia disintegrated following the breakup of Yugoslavia and that he did not have a hand in some of the worst atrocities. But in an emotional finale to his closing statement, Tieger said there was no doubt Mladic was guilty and focused in on the victims. "No-one can fathom the extent of the individual tragedies of the victims in this case," he said, referring to slain children, beaten prisoners and women who were raped. "The litany of tragedies goes on and on," Tieger said. "No-one can fathom the extent of the suffering for which Ratko Mladic is responsible."

Decision on Mladic about to come down...UN Tribunal to Decide Fate of 'Butcher of Bosnia' MladicNovember 22, 2017 - United Nations judges in The Hague are set to deliver a verdict Wednesday in the trial of former Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic, who is accused of war crimes stemming from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

Mladic, known as the "Butcher of Bosnia," is the last former military leader to face war crimes charges in the court, which was set up to deal with the aftermath of the Bosnian war that raged from 1992 through 1995. Mladic, who has been on trial since 2012, has been charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in leading sniper campaigns in Sarajevo and the 1995 killings of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica — the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

А Dec. 5, 2016, photo taken from video shows former Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic as he looks across the courtroom at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands.​

Prosecutors have asked the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to sentence Mladic to life in prison. Last year, attorney Alan Tieger said anything less than a life sentence would be “an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice.” Mladic’s defense lawyer, Dragan Ivetic, has accused prosecutors of seeking to make the former general a “symbolic sacrificial lamb for the perceived guilt” of all Serbs during the war. He called for Mladic, 75, to be acquitted on all charges.

A Bosnian Muslim woman protects herself from the sun during a funeral ceremony for dozens of newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, at the Srebrenica memorial center of Potocari, 150 km northeast of Sarajevo, Bosnia​

At the end of the war in 1995, Mladic went into hiding and lived in obscurity in Serbia, protected by family and elements of the security forces. Mladic was indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity but evaded justice for 16 years. He was eventually tracked down and arrested at a cousin's house in rural northern Serbia in 2011. The Bosnian Serbs' political leader, Radovan Karadzic, was found guilty of war crimes in March 2016 and sentenced to 40 years in prison. The U.N. tribunal is scheduled to initiate proceedings to deliver the verdict Wednesday.

Bosnia’s ‘eternal refugees’ await ruling on MladicWed, Nov 22, 2017 - In 1994, she was assigned to barrack No. 21 at the Jezevac camp for displaced people, where she awaited the end of Bosnia’s war. Nearly a quarter of century later, Suhra Mustafic still lives there.

Having fled at the beginning of the 1992-1995 war, she and her four children never returned to Skelani, their village on the Drina River, a natural border between Bosnia and Serbia. Her husband was killed a few months later in the eastern town of Srebrenica fighting forces of Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, who is to hear his verdict from a UN war crimes court today. Now aged 54, very ill and almost blind, Mustafic is one of about 400 people who settled in the “temporary” camp between a pine forest and a coal mine waste dump. The Jezevac camp has become a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the northeastern Bosnian town of Tuzla. The majority of its occupants come from the area around Srebrenica, where in July 1995, Mladic’s forces executed about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. The atrocity was the worst in Europe since World War II and deemed genocide by international courts.

Mustafic’s family living quarters, covering 35m2, were not designed to last. Her head covered with a blue veil, she lifted the carpet to show the rotten floor. A few pieces of old furniture are also falling apart. However, Mustafic never wanted to return to her Skelani, about 140km to the southeast. “Never! Even if I were offered a five-story house in my village, or five houses, I would not return there,” she said. “There is no one with whom I could share my daily life. My family, and those of my neighbors, were destroyed.” After the war, which claimed 100,000 lives, a peace deal split Bosnia along ethnic lines into two semi-independent entities. Skelani is now in the Serb-run entity, Republika Srpska, while the camp is on the other side of the demarcation line, in the federation dominated by Bosnian Muslims and Croatians.

A Bosnian Muslim woman walks in the Jezevac camp for displaced people near Tuzla, northeastern Bosnia​

Branka Antic Stauber, from the local Women’s Strength non-governmental organization assisting the refugees, said these often-widowed women in camps like Jezevac do not want to leave. They have become “prisoners of their trauma, because they never managed to break the impasse in which they found themselves,” she said. “Idleness is the silent killer of these people and the fact that we got them used to being dependent, by giving them what they needed for years, has only plunged them into inactivity. It extinguished their need to work and their ambitions,” she said. Hadzira Ibrahimovic, 38, has been living in the Jezevac camp since she was 13 years old and started a family there.

Her three children — aged 18, 11 and five — have been “refugees since birth,” the woman from the Srebrenica region said. “We pick up coal on the dump and we sell it,” Ibrahimovic said. “We cannot return. The house has been razed, there is no one left in the village, no school.” The widowed refugees receive a monthly pension of 360 convertible marks (US$217), which also supports their relatives. “The third generation of children are starting to be born in these collective centers. We are seeing a transmission of the trauma to children and grandchildren,” Antic Stauber said. Nearly 9,000 Bosnian citizens still live in 156 such camps across the nation. Bosnian Minister for Refugees Issues Semiha Borovac announced the goal of closing them by 2020.

The 1990s Balkan Wars in Key DatesNovember 22, 2017 — Ahead of the judgement Wednesday of Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, here is a timeline of the 1990s Balkans conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

- Bickering after Tito dies -

Communist Yugoslavia, which emerged shortly after the end of World War II, was made up of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Following the death of its autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the Yugoslav federation found itself in crisis, with bickering between ethnic groups and surging nationalist sentiments. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, inter-ethnic relations in Yugoslavia were at breaking point. The first multiparty elections in the republics in 1990 were won mostly by nationalists. The most prosperous republics, Slovenia and Croatia, started advocating a greater decentralization of Yugoslavia's government. But the largest republic, Serbia, led by Slobodan Milosevic, rallied fellow Serbs throughout Yugoslavia in a push for centralized control.

- Slovenia and Croatia declare independence -

On June 25, 1991, the parliaments of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, which led to the deployment of the Belgrade-controlled Yugoslav army (JNA) towards affected borders and airports. After a 10-day conflict, the JNA withdrew from ethnically homogeneous Slovenia. But in Croatia, Serbian troops sided with ethnic Serb rebels who opposed independence, launching what would become a four-year war. The eastern town of Vukovar was razed to the ground during a siege by Yugoslav forces in autumn 1991, while the medieval Adriatic town of Dubrovnik was severely damaged.

A Bosnian woman cries at a coffin of her relative, one of 173 coffins of newly identified victims from the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in the Potocari Memorial Center, near Srebrenica​

- Bosnian referendum -

In Bosnia, the most ethnically and religiously diverse republic and home to four million people, Muslims and Croats organized an independence referendum. The move was fiercely opposed by Belgrade-backed Bosnian Serbs, who made up more than 30 percent of the population. While Serbs boycotted the vote, 60 percent of Bosnia's citizens voted for independence.

- Bosnian war -

In April 1992 war broke out between Bosnia's Muslims and Croats, who were on one side, and Bosnian Serbs. Bosnia won international recognition a day later. Led by Radovan Karadzic and armed by the JNA, the Serbs declared that territories under their control belonged to an entity called Republika Srpska. Soon after, Bosnian Croats turned against the republic's Muslims.

(Reuters) - Serbia has arrested Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic who is wanted by an international court on genocide charges, a family friend said on Thursday.

"He is in the headquarters of BIA," the person said, referring to the Serbian intelligence agency. "He was arrested in Serbia."

An interior ministry official said earlier police had arrested someone thought to be Mladic and were checking his identity.

"He has some physical features of Mladic. We are analyzing his DNA now," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The suspect, who had documents on him bearing the name Milorad Komadic, was arrested in Serbia on an anonymous tip, he said.

Serbian President Boris Tadic scheduled an urgent news conference for 1300 local time (8 a.m. EDT), without giving any reason. Serbia must arrest Mladic if it wants to join the European Union. The former Bosnian Serb commander is sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide during the 1992-5 Bosnian war.

The European Commission said it was awaiting confirmation of whether Serbian police have arrested Mladic and said such a move would show the country wanted to move forward on European Union membership.

Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List, which first reported the story citing Serbian police sources, said Serbian special forces had made the arrest on Thursday in Serbia.

The paper said it followed a tip-off that Komadic bore a resemblance to Mladic.

The prosecutor's office at the ICTY in The Hague said it could not comment on operational issues.

Useful Searches

About USMessageBoard.com

USMessageBoard.com was founded in 2003 with the intent of allowing all voices to be heard. With a wildly diverse community from all sides of the political spectrum, USMessageBoard.com continues to build on that tradition. We welcome everyone despite political and/or religious beliefs, and we continue to encourage the right to free speech.

Come on in and join the discussion. Thank you for stopping by USMessageBoard.com!